What’s next for the Influencer? by Frances Wasem

Above, right ► Hand-painted plates at Wedgwood: Each highly decorated plate can take up 36 hours of handcraft by several craftsmen at Wedgwood's Barlaston factory in Stoke-on-Trent.

Opposite,

Clockwise from top ► Master glass-blower Michael Ruh designs and crafts his luxury glassware from his South London studio.

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at the V&A.

Paper sculptor Zoe Bradley's stunning handmade chandelier displayed at London's Burlington Arcade.

Method's Callum Robinson manufactures bespoke objects for brands such as Burberry, Aesop, Vacheron Constantin and Bentley. ► the tea leaves. This isn’t about fame. Nor is it about craft. It’s not even about creativity. For it's all these things and more. In many ways the most useful word is authenticity; you know it when you see it. Affluent consumers have become immensely more sophisticated at making these judgments and this is playing out around the world in a powerful projection of knowledge, selfexpression and values. And while the continued growth in wealth could be said to be a universal global trend, clearly those able to afford luxury are by no means a monolith block. But while their interests differ, I believe the considered and self-confident way that they will spend and express their point of view increasingly unites them. And is here to stay. This is fundamentally changing the outlook for not just for the luxury sector but all businesses who depend on the consumer, from fast-moving consumer goods behemoths to adventure holiday boutiques, from online platforms to Michelin-starred restaurants. To this list I would add museums and the visual and performing arts, who also compete for footfall and attention. For this is as much a cultural as a commercial phenomenon. Indeed, once one starts to join the dots, it’s not too much of a leap to see the relevance for cities, governments and nations, too. Bringing this back to where we started, my view is that the craft renaissance is important. Both to British luxury and the sector as a whole. But less because of the renewed interest in how things are made but as a symptom of a more thoughtful, open-minded and knowledgeable consumer mindset, in which the established players are scrutinised and expected to live up to more, while there is an increased desire to find out about and champion less-well-known talent. Looked at this way, while the disruption heading our way from artificial intelligence and the like is real, probably the more telling shift is going to come from how human beings have been changing (aided and amplified by new technologies). A valuable reminder that the best long-term hedge and repository of value remains a sustainable brand franchise based on a consumer’s love and respect. The other reason I find the interest in craft so heartening, is that it’s one of a number of straws in the wind that something I call ‘mass discernment’ may one day be possible. The place that comes closest to this now is Japan, where appreciation of beauty and quality is widely based. To some this may sound nightmarish but to me it’s a natural evolution that at its best will promote higher standards of creativity and transparency, as well as spread prosperity and shared values. In this scenario, a luxury brand who tries to boast about ersatz craftsmanship looks just as silly as a politician pedalling fake news.

Illustration ► Stuart Patience.

Banging your Drum

by Jeremy Langmead

An entertaining, inspiring and informative tale will help your brand speak for itself.

►What’s your story?

Close friends and family aside, do you get excited by someone else’s birthday? Once you’ve turned 40, the chances are you don’t even get excited by your own. Yet, in the (also beyond-celebrating) years I’ve been in this business, my eyes have always rolled at the number of press releases and requests from brands telling me it’s their birthday and how they’d love us to publish a piece to celebrate this wonderful achievement. Of course, I wish them every happiness – and, if it’s a true milestone, such as a centenary, then, wow, let’s see what we can do – but otherwise I honestly don’t think the readers or customers, especially those pesky millennials, are overly interested.

Of course, many brands such as yours will have intriguing tales to tell, histories with narrative and relevancy, a heartwarming approach to craftsmanship, plus ethical and sustainable working practices that all contribute to the ‘story’ around the product you make in your workshop or manufacture in your factory. And none of these facts should be ignored. So, I often get asked, how best to tell this story – especially in an age when the story-telling medium is changing on almost a daily basis? The good news is that to start with, and perhaps most importantly of all, the basic skill set you need doesn’t involve degrees or data. It simply requires you to be engaging about yourself, and interested in your customer. The easiest approach to take is to imagine you’re at a dinner party with people either side of you, one older and one younger, who you haven’t met before. The chances are, and I promise not to mention anniversaries again, that your opening gambit wouldn’t be: “It’s my birthday… are you very happy for me? Perhaps you’d like to give me a gift?” See what I mean? Ideally, you will have had a cursory conversation with both of them and discovered what may or may not interest them, the touchpoints you have in common, and how best to engage them: do they like listening, talking or, ideally, do they enjoy a combination of both? At some point, one or perhaps both of your dinner party guests will ask: “And what do you do?” And for the most part the way you answer that question is the key to the entire content strategy for your brand. Aware that they will both have varying degrees of interest, unaligned reference points, and perhaps an attractive guest seated on their other side trying to catch their eye, your answer needs to be succinct and memorable, with a beguiling mix of fact and anecdote. In sort, conversational catnip. You won’t here, and neither, with few exceptions, should you on your website, in your exhibition, or on a press release, use terminology unique to your industry that is mostly meaningless elsewhere. In-house jargon tends to bore the pants off, or at the very least puzzle, those outside your office. As soon as you’ve finished your answer, if you were brought up well, you will then ask a question of them. If what you told them about your brand ignited their interest, the conversation will naturally return to the subject without you having dominated or bored anyone with details that weren’t initially asked of you. If this sounds pretty obvious, it is. And yet so many of us leave our good manners at the dinner table and forget to bring them into the boardroom when planning a PR campaign or content strategy. So many brands forget to be interesting (yet have so much of interest to tell), so many brands still talk at their customers rather than with them, so many brands fail to spend five minutes asking themselves if what interests them is truly interesting to others, too. The basic rule of storytelling, in whatever format or platform it appears on, is to be entertaining, inspiring or informative (ideally all three if you’re a retail brand). Imagine you’re telling your story to a table of acquaintances (earlier in the evening, before too much has been drunk) and you will find your brand comes alive in a way it never could otherwise. In the 12 months I’ve been editing LUXX, I’ve had the fortune to visit the factories and workshops of everyone from Rolls-Royce to Zegna, George Smith to Smythson. There, on the ground, seeing and hearing the brands’ stories and expertise as told by the people who work there to a real person standing right next to them, in a personable as well as a professional context, brings everything truly alive. And in every case there are facts and anecdotes I’m able to take away, eagerly wanting to share with others. How best to share those stories, you ask. Well, first, tell me something about you… how do you know our hosts?

Jeremy Langmead ► Jeremy Langmead is editor-in-chief of The Times Luxx, and brand and content director at MR PORTER, which he helped to launch in 2011. A former editor of Esquire and Wallpaper*, Jeremy has a strong reputation for innovative ideas and sharp social trend analysis. In a career spanning 20 years, he launched The Sunday Times Style magazine, was life and style editor of Evening Standard and chief content officer at Christie’s.

What is next for the influencer?

Frances Wasem What is next for the influencer?